Monthly Archives: August 2017

We’re off and running on our little shakedown cruise, but as we should have known, things don’t always go according to plan.

After running around Stuart to make sure we have all the necessary oil and discharge stickers, we begin to make our way south on the St. Lucie River with visions of sailing and swimming in our heads. Based on a complete lack of wind, a faulty (by us) depth sounder that had us staying directly in the channel, finally coming to a beach only to run into water nearing 90 degrees, we failed at all our attempts for fun that day.

We always take the good with the bad though, so instead of focusing on what didn’t work out for us, we enjoyed a secluded night at anchor in Peck Lake, gazed at all the multi million dollar homes along the ICW, and moved ourselves down to Lake Worth in Palm Beach where we knew we could get out the inlet and raise our sails for the first time.

Make sure to join us in our next episode where we *DO* make it out the Palm Beach Inlet and raise our sails on Elements of Life for the first time.

Cheers from our shakedown!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.

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After two long years in the work yard and additional two months in the water, and we’re ready to toss off our dock lines!

We aren’t headed out for good, but we are more than ready for a shakedown cruise to see how systems are working, what still needs to be addressed before we can shove off for good, and most importantly, just give ourselves a nice vacation away from work and from the marina.

Getting ready to go came with a few of its own problems, and even for a shakedown we left about two weeks later than anticipated. Once we shoved off though, it was a nice 28 mile ride down the St. Lucie River into Stuart, which is our first stop on our trip. We got the anchor down just before thunderstorms came in over us and even used them for a fresh water rinse on deck.

Stay tuned for the next episode where we hopefully move ourselves further down the coast on our shakedown and take Elements of Life for her first sail.

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.

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We have now joined the ranks of sailors with the ability to shoot beautiful aerial views!

Deviating from the usual course once again, the drone we chose to purchase is the DJI Mavic Pro instead of the very popular Phantom 4. The Mavic Pro, when it is folded down it can just about fit in the size of your palm, meaning we’ll never have to second guess if we want to bring it out with us as we explore each location we sail to.

So far we’ve been having fun playing with it at the marina, steering through the maze of the channel and floating over all the boats in storage. We have a long way to go before finessing a fluid movement with the camera, but so far it has been a great addition to our camera gear.

In this episode I go over the new awning I just made for our cockpit, a simple design with no framing to adhere to. Also, while putting our headsails in place, we realize our staysail doesn’t have a good fit and we take measurements for hunting down a good used one to replace it.

Cheers from the WATER!!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.